Debate over former prime minister's legacy intensifies as ex-chancellor says 'she took no notice of opinion polls'

Heseltine set up the forum in the 1990s to help trade associations to raise their game

There are twice as  many names in the  'against us' column as in the 'for us' one

The boss of Italy’s biggest defence company, Finmeccanica, and the top executive at its helicopter division, AgustaWestland, were arrested today in a corruption probe.

After a record crop of entries, the prize for this year’s most convoluted Christmas-referencing Commons intervention goes to Labour frontbencher Iain Wright who asked Vince Cable yesterday (and this is only a bowdlerised extract): “Given that this is the season of good will…will the Secretary of State ask for permission from his Minister of State at least to undo his electronic tag a notch or two and will not BIS and DECC ministers snuggle up together to watch Strictly, eggnog in hand, and promise to come back in 2013 determined to focus on British enterprise… not departmental infighting and ministerial surveillance?”

The names of the guest editors lined up for Radio 4's Today show were released today. Between 27 December and New Year's Day, the 6am to 9am slot will be in the hands of the Nobel prize-winning geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, journalist Dame Ann Leslie, comedian Al Murray, poet Benjamin Zephaniah and the US philanthropist Melinda Gates, wife of Bill.

I have a confession to make that will destroy what cred I ever had. I loved the Spice Girls. When my daughters were small, they would sit glued to the box watching the glammy, glitzy airheads. I was gutted when I couldn't come with them to a concert, but I did make it to a Destiny's Child gig.

The allegedly respected Thatcherite knows a thing or two about the media

Big business loved it, small business less so, but most agreed that while the economy could benefit long term, the current low to zero growth isn't going to enjoy a quick pick up from the Budget.

Margaret Thatcher was privately urged by senior ministers to consign Liverpool to a fate of "managed decline" after the Toxteth riots and spend regeneration money elsewhere, according to official papers made public for the first time today.

The last time a government faced riots on the British mainland as widespread as last week's was in the summer of 1981, when trouble began in Brixton and spread to almost every major city in England.

Thirty years have passed since Liverpool's poverty-fuelled riots destroyed parts of the city. Stephen Kelly, who covered the violence in 1981, reports from a city that still feels its impact

Nick Clegg has been making free with his witticisms. He's not the first politician to fancy himself as a comedian, says Andy McSmith

This is an exercise aimed at damaging Ed Balls. Yet, the documents are not incriminating